Stealth Education

“Well do you think it did any good at all?” The President asked the others sitting around the large oval conference table in the command bunker.

The President asked the question to the entire room, but his tired eyes looked directly at his Press Secretary.

“It’s too early to tell Mr. President.” The Press Secretary was a tall, thin middle-aged man who looked like he would be more comfortable in a cubicle at a large accounting firm than sitting here advising the leader of what was left of the free world. “Most of the education we provided was for long term survival, over a period of months and years. We knew our training program was really only directed at the small portion of the population that would survive the initial catastrophe.”

“Yes, yes, I know, but we’re three months in now, do we have any indication as to what percentage took the training to heart?”

“Sir, the problem is that the ones who really learned from all of our educational programming, will not be jumping up and down waving a “Help Us” banner.”

The President raised his eyebrows; everyone knew that meant he wanted the speaker to elaborate.

The Secretary explained. “One of the re-occurring themes in all of the training was that staying hidden and off the grid was the best strategy for continued survival. No matter what the threat, it is always best to stay concealed from both the initial threat that brought down society, as well as hiding from other survivors who will just consume your resources, while reducing chances of long term survival.”

“Going to be tough to take the next Census.” Quipped the Chief of Staff, to quite a few chuckles around the table.

The President looked at his Chief of Staff and pressed for a better answer to his original question. “Well what real data do we have that any of our training programs had an effect?”

The Chief of Staff looked down the table at the Commerce Secretary.

Commerce took a second to look at the contents of a folder in front of her on the table. “Sir, our numbers indicate that the retail sales of bows, crossbows, and firearms increased, as the number of training programs increased. We feel that this correlation indicated the message was taken to heart by at least the folks who watched the training videos.”

“Do we have any idea how many watched the training videos?” The President asked, looking further down the table at the network executives.

The collection of suits looked around at each other and silently selected a representative. A large man cleared his throat as he stood up to respond. He looked directly at the president, “Sir, the collective ratings for our Zombie Apocalypse programming indicate over fifteen million repeat viewers. In fact our Zombie programs as a whole were the highest rated programs at one point.

The exec waited for a response and then continued when all he got was a nod. “Our Alien Invasion programs also faired very well with over ten million viewers, and another ten million watched the nuclear, loss of electric grid, and EMP blast, apocalypse shows.” The exec concluded, “We only had 7 years to provide the programs but we reached over 25 percent of the U.S. population with the combination of survival training education we provided.”

The President grinned slightly and addressed the table at large. “So the future of the USA and civilization now depends on couch potatoes who watched apocalyptic Zombie and Science fiction disaster shows. Let’s all hope they learned something!”